james bond2002
TRANSCRIPT
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alle B
erry
πBy
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PHOTOGRAPH BY PATRICK DEMARCHELIER © 2002 DANJAQ LLC AND UNITED ARTISTS CORPORATION, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED It’s
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ebi
kin
i is
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Dr.
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“I
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ater
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dth
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as,”
Ber
ry
says
. “I
thou
ght,
‘Wow
! Wou
ldn’
t it
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grea
t to
be
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her
?’”
Ber
ry’s
mem
ory
of h
er fi
rst
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d m
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t m
ight
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m s
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even
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ck’s
inve
nti
on—
if t
he s
ame
imag
e w
eren
’tfr
ozen
in th
e m
inds
of m
illio
ns
of o
ther
007
fan
s. B
ut w
hen
you
’re
an O
scar
win
ner
an
d on
e of
the
mos
t so
ught
-aft
er a
ctre
sses
in
H
olly
woo
d, fa
nta
sies
hav
e a
way
of c
omin
g tr
ue. B
erry
get
s to
live
hers
out
on
an
Apr
il af
tern
oon
in C
ádiz
, Spa
in. W
eari
ng
a flu
ores
-ce
nt
oran
gebi
kin
i, sh
e sl
ips
off
her
flipfl
ops,
adj
usts
the
whi
te-
leat
her
knif
e be
lt s
lun
g lo
w a
roun
d he
r hi
ps, w
ades
abo
ut 1
0 m
e-te
rsou
t in
to th
e sh
allo
ws
of th
e A
tlan
tic
and
turn
s ba
ck to
war
d th
ebe
ach.
“An
d ac
tion
!” d
irec
tor
Lee
Tam
ahor
i cal
lsth
roug
h a
meg
a-ph
one.
Ber
ry d
ips
unde
r th
e su
rfac
e, p
ops
back
up,
run
s he
r ha
nds
thro
ugh
her
hair
, the
n s
asha
ys to
war
d sh
ore,
her
wet
ski
n g
liste
n-
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—URSULA ANDRESS as HONEY RYDER Dr. No (1962)
≤I really had to do verylittle: a little standing, alittle swimming, a littlerunning. People said I was incredible, but
I looked and I can’t seewhat they see. I was just
being myself.≥
≤Jinx is a cool, modernversion of what a BondGirl has always been.
She’s very 2002, verywhat’s-happening-now.If there were a female
Bond, it could be Jinx—unshaken, unstirred.≥
—HALLE BERRY as JINX Die Another Day (2002)
JINX has Pussy Galore’s sass, Wai Lin’s kick-ass skills and the sex appeal of ... just about every Bond Girl
BANG BANG Director Tamahori runsthrough a shooting scene with Berry
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m o v i e s
filming. “Trying to hit that note correctly—with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek, yet also trying to play him with a cer-tain reality—can be tricky.”
Brosnan’s eight-year delay helped himbuild a better Bond. Age weathered someof his pretty-boy sheen; a few more lines onhis face, a touch more flesh at his jawline,and he began to look like a man who’d sur-vived a few too many fights and a few toomany cocktails. By now, his fourth time inthe role, “the part has become second na-ture in some respects,” he says. “I’ve growninto it—or at least I’d like to think I have.”
Die Another Day gives Brosnan achance to stretch a bit, by working an emo-tional terrain usually reserved for bad guysin their final moments of pain and despair.
ing’s novels will recognize. They “bring outhis vulnerable side,” says writer Wade.“But you’ll see a lot of resilience.”
If the thought of Bond on a mission ofself-discovery makes you queasy, relax. Asguardians of the 007 legacy, Broccoli andWilson won’t mess with—or let anyone elsemess with—the formula. They constantlyfield suggestions to tweak the franchise, butmost times, “Barbara and I have to say no—to casting someone inappropriate, to di-minishing the role of Bond, to making itinto a buddy picture,” says Wilson.“The principle is what Cubby said:‘Don’t screw it up.’”
producing with his stepfather since 1985’sA View to a Kill, and Barbara had been anassistant director and associate producer inthe ’80s.) Their first effort: GoldenEye, thehigh-tech, high-speed 1995 hit that proved007 could compete with the big-bang ac-tion pictures while keeping some of hischeeky, retro spirit. Since then, the com-petition has only got tougher, brasher andmore explosive, with plenty of pretendersto the throne—most recently, Vin Diesel’sxXx—echoing villain Auric Goldfinger’s fa-mous threat: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect youto die.”
He’s not dead yet. Broccoli and Wilsonmade sure of that by paying Brosnan a re-ported $15 million per picture to stay in therole. He was almost the Bond that got away:in 1986, Brosnan had to turn down an offerto play the role because he couldn’t get outof his Remington Steele TV contract. But hewas ready to take the part when asked againin 1994. After Roger Moore’s disarminglyjocular and almost geriatric Bond, and thenTimothy Dalton’s brooding, I’m-really-a-serious-actor Bond, the debonair Irishmanhas reinvigorated the old spy and evenshows signs of making the character hisown. Although he delivers Bond-mots withrequisite panache, Brosnan tends to playthe part straighter and steelier than Mooredid, and he’s plainly more comfortable in007’s skin than Dalton. On the beachsideset in Cádiz, he slips into and out of the role,puffing a Cuban cigar all the while. It maynot seem so, but playing Bond “is bloodyhard work,” he says during a break from
In return for makingthe cold look so hot, Berry
wins the undivided attentionof everyone on set—including
the off-duty Bond. Lolling underthe thatched roof of a beachside ca-
bana throughout the scene, Pierce Bros-nan hasn’t taken his wolfish eyes offBerry. “Look what you’ve created,” hewhispers to writers Robert Wade andNeal Purvis, a sly grin creeping across hisface. “Look what you’ve done.”
that the bond girl rising from thesea is the reigning Oscar queen says plen-ty about the staying power of the under-stated British spy Ian Fleming created 50
years ago. Though Fleming’s 14th and lastBond book was published 36 years ago—twoyears after his death—his characterlaunched the most successful franchise infilm history. Now celebrating its 40th an-niversary with the release this month of the20th official Bond film, the series has comeroaring back from its protracted midlife cri-sis of the 1980s. The last three outings, allstarring Brosnan, have together grossedmore than $1 billion at the box office—and ifthe story lines were not always coherent, atleast the action was reliably high-octane, thestunts spectacular, the women lovely (andincreasingly lethal) and the hero an island ofimperturbable British cool amid the may-hem. In Brosnan, the franchise has found itsbest Bond since Sean Connery (some saythe best of all time), a man whose nimblebrow and arch half-smiles see to it that—
“A Bond movie has conven-tions: girls, gadgets, action,” saysTamahori, a New Zealander bestknown for the 1994 Maori do-mestic drama Once Were War-riors. “It’s not that you muststick with them, but if youdon’t, you may be doing thefilm—and the genre—a dis-service.” So he gives us thestaples: action, exotic set-tings, a good-vs.-evilshowdown and Bondgirls (Berry and pale,slinky British new-comer RosamundPike). Enliveningthese elementsare blasts fromthe past in hon-or of the fran-chise’s 40th an-niversary—nodsto Bond history,from Berry’s sexy play on Andress toStephens’ Union Jack parachute to cameosby memorable gadgets (Thunderball’s jetpack, Octopussy’s Crocodile minisubma-rine). Audiences won’t doubt for a momentthat they’re watching a Bond movie.
on nov. 18, queen elizabeth will go tothe movies for the only time this year, toDie Another Day’s world premiere at Lon-don’s Royal Albert Hall. We’ll probablynever know whether the Queen wasamused, but it’s only proper that she
despite decades of critics asking when he’llmothball the tux, pack away the Waltherppk and retire—“Bond is still so sexy and socool,” as Berry puts it.
Much of the credit for the aging spy’sresuscitation goes to producers BarbaraBroccoli and Michael Wilson. The daugh-ter and stepson of franchise co-founder Al-bert “Cubby” Broccoli, the two run EON—short for “Everything or Nothing”—theLondon-based company that has producedall 20 “official” Bond films (Never Say Nev-er Again, the Connery comeback vehiclemade by Jack Schwartzman and Kevin Mc-Clory in 1983, is considered a rene-gade). When Cubby’s health began tofail in the 1990s, they stepped up totake his place. (Wilson had been co-
Betrayed during an investigation into dia-mond smuggling, Bond is jailed and tor-tured by the North Koreans in what mightbe the first Bond scene to qualify as har-rowing. Battered, bruised, bearded and,yes, even long-haired—we’ve never seenthe man like this. Naturally, he eventuallywins freedom and makes his way back toLondon, only to learn that he’s beenstripped of his 00 status. His quest for re-demption—and to unmask the traitor—takes him into the arms of three womenand the crosshairs of Gustav Graves (TobyStephens), an audacious diamond tycoonbent on (what else?) world domination.(The writers had the good sense to ditchthe small-potatoes bad guys of recent films,like the one bent on conquering ... the me-dia sector.) Bond’s trials, at the hands ofboth his captors and the agency that losesfaith in him, reveal traits that fans of Flem-
ing in the afternoon sun. Tamahori asks herto do it again. And again. Then he has herswim toward the camera. “And action!”Cut, action, cut, action, one final “Cut!”—and the set bursts into applause.
When Berry comes out of the water, herteeth are chattering. The locals say April was
never this frigid, this windy—“Nunca,”they insist, never—until the week shehad to pretend the icy Atlantic was thebath-warm Gulf of Mexico and shootScene 102, her big entrance as Jinx, themysterious assassin in the new Bond
film Die Another Day.
SHE SHELLS Rising from the sea, Andress’s Bond Girl created the image
COME AGAIN Berry, as a (surprise!) mysteri-ous killer, echoes Andress’s big entrance
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HOW THE FAMILY REVIVED AN ICON
JACKPOT AT THE CASINO ROYALE
Box-Office Gross Income (in inflation-adjusted $millions)SOURCE: IMDB
son have maintained the momen-tum since then, with bigger bud-gets and globally recognized tal-ent—Asian action queen MichelleYeoh (Crouching Tiger, HiddenDragon); the enigmatic SophieMarceau—to stay competitive. AtMGM, 007’s financier and U.S. dis-tributor, vice chairman ChrisMcGurk insists “everything is really
mutual in terms of approvals,” butthe studio’s only contractual poweris to greenlight (or not) a film. Allelse, from script to cast and crew,is in EON’s domain.
One gripe about this powerstructure is that it breeds inertia.The Broccolis aren’t obstruction-ist, says a studio insider, but“they are very adamant about thethings James Bond can andcannot do.” One perennial sug-gestion that always gets vetoed isfor new larger-than-life villains àla Blofeld, who bedeviled Bond infive of the first seven films. “Theyalways say: JamesBond is the hero,”
says an MGM exec. “No one canovershadow him.”
For Cubby, making Bond afamily business meant a personaltouch with talent—cooking spa-ghetti for cast and crew or flying anactor’s hairstylist in on Concorde.“He was a big daddy figure,” saysLois Chiles (Holly Goodhead inMoonraker). “He invited us to be
non-007 films, but only one was ahit: 1968’s Chitty Chitty BangBang, also based on an Ian Flem-ing work. The family now has astage version of Chitty on in Lon-don, and they dabble in licensing.But Bond is the core of their busi-ness, and they’ll continue, saysWilson, “as long as people wantthe product.”
A big test of the Broccoli-Wil-son era will come when Brosnangives up his 00 status. Broccoli’sstandard reply to queries on thattopic: “That’s like walking down theaisle and being asked who your
BARBARA BROCCOLI is“very Italian, a screamerand a yeller,” one friendsays. Her production firm,Astoria, makes TV movieslike Crime of the Century
MICHAEL WILSON, acerebral, reserved pro-ducer and lawyer, is alsoa top collector of 19thcentury photography
CUBBY BROCCOLI grewup in New York, moved toLondon in the ’50s andproduced 16 Bond filmsbefore his death in 1996
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Some people grow up watchingBond; if you’re a Broccoli, yougrow up making him. EON,the production house behind
007, has been a family businesssince Albert “Cubby” Broccoli andHarry Saltzman, who produced thefirst nine films together, set it up in1961. Today, a second generationof Broccolis—Cubby’s daughterBarbara and stepson Michael Wil-son—runs the London-based outfit.They guard the Bond traditionfiercely, but they’ve also broughtthe once-fading franchise forward.“They’ve re-examined the characterand focused on who Bond is—notjust what his world is like,” saysJohn Cork, co-author of JamesBond: The Legacy. The result? “Atotal revitalization of the series.” Orclose enough for genre work.
They were groomed for the jobfrom their youth. Michael had anuncredited part in Goldfinger, andby the 1970s, he was helping withscriptwriting. Barbara was “a gen-eral dogsbody on set from the timeI started,” recalls Roger Moore,who says “she inherited a lot of herfather’s talent.” By 1985, she wasan assistant director on A View to aKill, a film Michael co-wrote andco-produced. But the franchise,though still profitable, was flag-ging—the last three films in the’80s were the worst box-office per-formers of the series. In the early1990s, an ailing Cubby relin-quished more and more work, and1995’s GoldenEye was the firstBond co-produced by Barbara andMichael (and the first with PierceBrosnan). The step-siblings rede-ployed their spy, adding some seri-ous action to get things up to date.
It was 007’s box-of-fice best since Moon-raker in 1979.
Broccoli and Wil-
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should come out to support Bond: after all,he has been in Her Majesty’s public servicefor 40 years (50 if you count the books) as astalwart of the British film industry andglobal ambassador of British cool—evenbefore Cool Britannia existed.
When Bond first introduced himselfonscreen in 1962, Britain’s geographic Em-pire was breaking up, but its cultural onewas burgeoning. Even then, in the era ofthe Beatles and Carnaby Street, the din-ner-jacketed Cambridge grad seemed curi-ously old school. Still, he has managed toage gracefully—that is, barely at all. Hiscountry is fixed in amber, too—which isalso part of the appeal. In a Bond film,Britain is still a superpower. In The SpyWho Loved Me (1977), the villainStromberg captures three nuclear sub-marines—one American, one Soviet andone British—and only Britain, thanks to007, can respond. In 1997’s TomorrowNever Dies, China and Britain teeter on thebrink of a bilateral war. Tony Blair may be
accused of being George W.
Bush’s lapdog, but in Bond’s world, “theAnglo-American special relationship isturned upside down,” says James Chap-man, a film historian and author of Licenceto Thrill, a cultural history of Bond. Amer-icans—from cia agent Felix Leiter to thensa’s Falco (Michael Madsen) in Die An-other Day—just play backup to the realglobal policeman who saves all in the nameof Queen and Country. Bond—part tradgentleman, part liberated hedonist, allBrit—is, in Chapman’s words, “an excep-tion to the rule of American cultural impe-rialism [and] the Coca-Colonization ofglobal culture.”
Nobody seems to mind this form ofBritish imperialism. In fact, we kind of likeit. EON says that more than 2 billion peo-ple have seen a Bond film, and you onlyhave to look around Cádiz to see the holdBond has on the popular imagination. The007 shoot makes the front pages every day;the Diario de Cádiz reports that Berry’s“figure is so fine that it will give ammuni-tion to the poets at Carnival time.” Hun-
dreds of locals play hooky fromwork and school to stake outshoot locations in the hopes ofseeing stars. And even CrownPrince Felipe, in town for someofficial engagements, clearsspace in his diary for a chat withBrosnan.
If culture really is globaliz-ing, then Bond is part of themovement. We know the catch-phrases and we’ve seen thespoofs from Casino Royale toAustin Powers to The Simpsons(Homer goes to work for aBondlike baddie), but far fromhurting Bond, the parodies andtakeoffs only keep him on ourcultural radar. “I walk down thestreet, and people say, ‘I justsaw your movie!’” says JaneSeymour, who played the tarot-
reading virgin Solitaire in 1973’s Live andLet Die. Jonathan Pryce, who played thevillain Elliot Carver in Tomorrow NeverDies, won’t call himself a fan anymore.“I’ve discovered what being a true Bondfan—as in fanatic—means,” he says. “Mypostbag quadrupled with requests for au-tographs and memorabilia. There must bea great trade in it.”
He’s right, of course. From cars toclothes, a numbing array of products rides onBond’s stylish coattails, a parade of brands inkeeping with the character’s roots. Flemingwrites, for instance, that his spy lights hishand-rolled cigarettes (from Morlands, theLondon tobacconist) with a gold Dunhilllighter. His (free) plugs for these brandshelped to establish Bond as a connoisseur.They also foreshadowed the phenomenonwe call product placement (see box). 007’spartners will spend an estimated $120 mil-lion on Die Another Day-related advertising,
while Bond Marketing, a di-vision of EON’s sister firm
LIVE AND LET FLY On afrozen Icelandic lagoon,Bond (in an Aston Mar-tin) goes auto-a-auto withbad guy Zao (in a Jaguar)
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next husband will be.” Well,maybe, but we do want to know.The new 007 will be the first notchosen by Cubby—who died in1996—and the clearest sign of hisheirs’ plans for the future. Brosnanwill be back for the next film—which may start shooting late nextyear—but is noncommittal on asixth. “It’s hard to plan,” he says.“Not knowing what’s around thecorner is one of the joys of beingan actor.” And the curse of being aproducer, even when you’re work-ing with James Bond. —J.C. With reporting by Theunis Bates/London
and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles
part of his family.” But the Mr. NiceGuy routine stopped at the busi-ness office door. “You felt that hewas on your side,” says LoisMaxwell, who played Miss Mon-eypenny in the first 14 films. “Ex-cept when it came to the money.Then he’d fight with your agent forevery last penny.”
Cubby’s success won him afair level of respect in Hollywood—in 1982 at the Oscars, he got theIrving Thalberg award for his pro-duction work—and every studiowishes it had a franchise this lu-crative. But the family is still con-
sidered a niche player. Cubbydid make more than 20
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The 20th Bond film will rideinto the record books onone of the biggest movie-promo bandwagons ever.
007’s business partners arespending an estimated $120million on tie-in advertising, andmillions more have already beeninvested in products and servicesfor the making of the film itself.Maybe they should have called itBuy Another Day.
The Bond franchise is one ofthe pioneers of product place-ment. “Bond has always been abrand-aware character,” saysDavid Wilson, EON’s vice presi-
dent of global business strategy.Dr. No “placed” Pan Am, RedStripe and Smirnoff. But DieAnother Day sets a new standardfor promotional deals, pitchingabout 20 brands, from Finlandiavodka (yep, he switched) to 7-Upand Norelco shavers.
Some publicity-hungry firmspay for screen time. But far moreproduct placement actuallyworks on barter. For example,Ford provided several AstonMartins (for Bond), Jaguars (forthe bad guy Zao), Thunderbirds(for Jinx), Range Rovers (utilityvehicles), spare parts and
technical help. That in-kindcontribution saved EON millionsin production costs—“the valuethat we got far exceeded the cashthey could give us,” Wilson says.In return, Ford will get invaluablescreen time for its vehicles.Millions more in promised movietie-in promos from the carmakerwill also cut the ad budgets of thedistributors—MGM in the U.S.and Fox overseas.
Not every product placergets such a high profile. Jinxwon’t walk around with a Revlonsign to let us know who madeher makeup, and Bond won’thave a Brioni tag hanging off histux. But the firms hope for giltby association—and the chance
to slap a 007 seal of approval ontheir ads. Bollinger champagnecan freshen its traditional imagewith the help of the “debonairand charming James Bond,”says president Ghislain deMontgolfier. “What could bemore stylishly up-to-date?”
On the other hand, whatcould be more off-putting than atwo-hour-long ad you’re payingupwards of $10 to see? Wilsoninsists “we’re making movies,not commercials.” And doing alittle smart business on the side.
—J.C. With reporting by ReemaAmeer/London
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VANQUISH V12 $228,000,guns and rockets not included
SAME OLD DREAM Graves,right, and his henchman Zao(Rick Yune) plot to create anew global superpower
Bond feels the PAIN usually reserved for the bad guys
Danjaq, is oversee-ing the rollout of Bond
Swatches ($50-$110); Bondgirl Barbie andKen as Bond ($80 for the pair); and, ofcourse, the 007 snowmobile ($6,000-plus).
What’s surprising is that the global fanbase is self-renewing—it’s not just nostalgicboomers recalling a film they saw (some of)on a high-school date, but younger fanswho, like Berry, met 007 on the smallscreen. Or online. Contributors to the manyBond sites and boards “range from teens onup,” says Matt Sherman, co-editor of 007for-ever.com. Many of the young fans are meet-ing 007 through video games. Since 1999,“we’ve sold almost 20 million,” says MGMconsultant Larry Gleason. “There’s a wholegeneration of kids out there whose primary
reference point isn’t Dr. No or The World IsNot Enough. It’s the GoldenEye game.”
With so much in the films codified andinviolable, part of the charm lies in the freshideas and small tweaks that Wilson andBroccoli do allow—and even encourage.The danger du jour, for instance, comesstraight out of the headlines. “The filmshave adapted to make them relevant to thecontemporary world,” says Michael Har-vey, curator of “Bond, James Bond,” an ex-hibition of 007 cars, gadgets and memora-bilia that has sold out every day sinceopening at London’s Science Museum onOct. 16. From Russia with Love (1963) ar-rived at the height of the cold war; Moon-
raker (1979) took off at the zenith of theStar Wars craze; and in Die AnotherDay—in a move that will dismay reput-ed 007 fan Kim Jong Il—evil springs
from North Korea, a decision the writerssay was made way before Bush came to thesame conclusion. The mix of reality andfantasy may have been what social theoristsTony Bennett and Janet Woollacott had inmind when they wrote, in Bond and Be-yond: The Political Career of a PopularHero, that “Bond has constituted a nodalsignifier, active in the relations between aseries of ideologies, a point at which theyhave been crisscrossed and compacted intoa unified formation in assuming a tangible,identifiable form.”
Or maybe not. Anyway, “you can’t be so serious about Bond,” says Ursula Andress, who did know the manintimately. She says thereason we still like him ismuch simpler: “Bondis just fun.”
in his trailer in cadiz, lee tamahori isfuriously shoveling salad into his mouth inbetween gulps of cranberry juice. Heeats—and talks while he eats—like ateenager. He even dresses a little like one:tracksuit bottoms and a worn T shirt froma bar in Old Havana. But perhaps most im-portantly for the franchise, Tamahori is try-ing to think like a teen and make a film thatappeals to that coveted demographic. Thebest way to do that, the director says, is notto dumb Bond movies down, but to makethem smarter. “A lot of action movies arevery lame because they ask you to just ac-
Bond, the GLOBAL POLICEMAN, saves the world for Queen and Country
cept them for what they are,” he says.“Teenagers are far sharper than that—andthey don’t like to be insulted.”
He remembers. Tamahori was 13 whenhe saw From Russia with Love at a Welling-ton, New Zealand, cinema. He loved the“great, filthy stuff” in that film—not just thesexiness but also the classic fight scenes andthe feel of a true thriller—and says he’s try-ing to deliver a 21st century update of that.“Filthy and snappy!” he says to Brosnan andBerry as they film the scene where Bondand Jinx meet after her swim. He wantsmore lust and leer in this encounter—andthe whole film. Rosamund Pike,who plays MI6 agent MirandaFrost, jokes that “Lee wants tomake this an X-rated Bondfilm.” In truth, he just wants a“traditional” Bond. After Dr.No’s release in 1962, the Vaticancondemned the film’s amorality,and in 1965, Time disdained thepopularity of “the sex, violenceand snobbery with which Flem-ing endowed his British secretagent.” The stuff was consid-ered filthy. But lately Bond hasbeen mostly bang-bang, you’redead. “I was worried that hewas turning into an sas man,machine-gunning everyone,”says Tamahori. “I’ve been try-ing to keep a lid on that andmake him more of an Ian Flem-ing Bond.”
Writers Purvis and Wade,both big Fleming fans, werehappy to go back to the books.They returned with a script thatput 007 in tense, compromisedpositions. They also added whatWade calls “nerdy stuff thatonly five fans will note”—a few lines echoingFleming’s texts, a diamond theme that actu-ally comes not from Diamonds Are Foreverbut from his 1957 book on the gem tradecalled The Diamond Smugglers, and thedozens of references to movies past. Theseare meant to be cues, Purvis says, to “re-mind us of where Bond is coming from.”
Berry’s character is likewise shaped byhistory. The name Jinx may not have thecome-hither connotations of Bond Girls past,but the character is in many ways a compos-ite of her predecessors. She has the sass ofGoldfinger’s Pussy Galore, the kick-ass skillsof Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies and
DIE, MR. BOND 007 sufferscapture, torture and even afew bad hair days at thehands of the North Koreans
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this year’s Best Actress Oscar. “After mak-ing something as emotionally wrought asMonster’s Ball, I thought, ‘What fun wouldit be to go play in the World of Bond?’”
one afternoon in cadiz, pierce brosnanstands on the rooftop of the Santa CruzCathedral’s annex. Taking a breather froma scene in which 007 meets a Cuban MI6operative named Raoul (Emilio Echevar-ria), he gazes out over the city and reflectson a franchise that has made him into gos-sip-page fodder and a global star. Bond, hesays, “is a leviathan—and it’s even moreamazing after doing all these films.”
Stop the man before he belts out No-body Does It Better—but it’s hard to arguewith his point. The question with Die An-other Day is not whether it will be a hit, buthow big. Predict Bond’s demise at yourown risk—how many of his critics has heoutlived already? In Dr. No, the fishermanQuarrel warns: “It don’t do for a man totempt Providence too often.” Always agambler, 007 seems to have taken thosewords like a dare. And 40 years later, it’ssafe to say we have a response: it don’t dofor a man to bet against Bond. —With report-
ing by Theunis Bates/London and Jeffrey Ress-
ner/Los Angeles
the sex appeal of ... just about every one. Put agun in her handbag, add a murky agendaand you have a Bond Girl who’s “one step fur-ther from the previous one,” says Berry. “She’snot just eye candy. She’s feisty, a fighter.”
One reason she took the part, Berrysays, is because “it was one of the few timesin my career that I just got called up andasked to be in a movie.” The $4 million-pluspaycheck—a Bond Girl record—was an in-centive. And this was also a chance toswitch gears from her last role, as the bat-tered, beleaguered death-row-inmate’swidow in Monster’s Ball, for which she won
Of course Fleming had no clue in 1952,when he banged out the first book anddubbed its hero Bond—the “dull and anony-mous name,” as he put it, of the author ofBirds of the West Indies (look out for thebook’s cameo)—what his character would become. The market today is more crowdedthan ever, but Bond’s makers even look atthe competition with pride. “xXx, AustinPowers, even The Bourne Identity are allhomages to Bond,” says MGM vice chair-man Chris McGurk. “All these movies do isto reinforce the significance of Bond as themost original, the biggest and the best.”
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